10 Men Who Know What Women Want

by Pamela Redmond Satran

George Clooney

How do you get a woman to fall in love with you even when she knows, pretty much for sure, that you’ll never marry her? Ask George Clooney, who, since his divorce, has accomplished that feat with countless gorgeous girlfriends (and virtually every woman in the world).

Mark Kelly

As a husband, this astronaut is definitely not lost in space. When he first met Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman who was nearly assassinated in Tucson early this year, he won her over not with his machismo, she’s said, but with his obvious love for his two daughters. He and Giffords always encouraged each other’s independent travels and careers, which is why Kelly left his wife’s bedside to pilot this month’s NASA shuttle mission.

Jonathan Franzen

His channeling of Patty, the heroine of his latest novel, Freedom, and her forty-something female angst was so profoundly on target that we wonder: Did this best-selling writer crawl inside our brains? Drill into our hearts? Some say Franzen doesn’t really like women, but if he insists on creating such amazing characters, we, like Oprah, will be forced to forgive him.

Chaz Bono

You know how you sometimes wish you could marry your best friend? That must be what it’s like to be with Chaz Bono, Cher’s former daughter and once and future child, who seems so much more comfortable in his new male skin than he ever did as a little girl in ruffles and curls.

Patrick Dempsey

TV’s Doctor McDreamy has a real-life medical dream: fighting ovarian cancer. He founded the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing in his hometown of Lewiston, Maine, where his mother has been treated during a long battle with the disease. The actor, who has three children with his wife of 12 years, also founded the Dempsey Challenge, a two-day run, walk and bike fund raiser that has raised a million dollars for the cancer center.

Seal

Launches a relationship with Heidi Klum, the world’s most intimidating supermodel + while she is pregnant by her former boyfriend + fathers three more children with her in four years + supports her rise to television stardom = a very special blend of sensitivity and cojones.

Mark Ruffalo

Hard to believe the real guy could be any more empatico than his “half lesbian” character in The Kids Are All Right, but consider this: the actor first turned down the part because he felt he’d been away too much from his wife, Sunrise Coigney, and their three kids. But then Sunrise, a friend of Julianne Moore’s, urged him to do what became his Oscar-nominated turn as a sexy single guy who falls in love with a woman and a family.

Jon Hamm

Strong, sexy, ’60s Don Draper was the one who turned us on at first. But then the real Jon Hamm turned up-- the very modern man behind the Mad Men hero. On Saturday Night Live, Hamm poked fun at his lady-killing character by delivering a poker-faced “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women.” (Step one: Whenever possible, remain silent.) Final proof that Jon is even more perfect than Don: Postfame, he’s still with longtime prefame girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt.

Gabriel Byrne

On In Treatment, he plays a suffering psychoanalyst who super-empathizes with his patients, and the real-life Byrne-- who spent four adolescent years in a Catholic seminary-- has the same magic. In his autobiography, he wrote a “Prayer for My Daughter,” which contains the lines “You are me. And I am you.” We’d lie on Byrne’s couch and let him peer into our soul anytime.

Ryan Gosling

Maybe it’s because he seems so strong and distant, except when he’s with the woman he loves. Maybe it was his delivering possibly the best movie kiss ever, in The Notebook with Rachel McAdams. He’d be our perfect soul mate-- if we could just make him spit out that gum and wipe the smirk off his face.